She smiled. “I thought I said resigned.”
“You said both.”
“Are you saying you think I killed my husband?”
“I don’t think anything yet. But it is a possibility.”
“Is it?”
“You had access to the safe. You were inside the house defences when it happened. And now it sounds as if you might have some emotional motives.”
Still smiling, she said, “Building a case, are we, Mr. Kovacs?”
I looked back at her. “If the heart pumps. Yeah.”
“The police had a similar theory for a while. They decided the heart didn’t pump. I’d prefer it if you didn’t smoke in here.”
I looked down at my hands and found they had quite unconsciously taken out Kristin Ortega’s cigarettes. I was in the middle of tapping one out of the pack. Nerves. Feeling oddly betrayed by my new sleeve, I put the packet away.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s a question of climate control. A lot of the maps in here are very sensitive to pollution. You couldn’t know.”
She somehow managed to make it sound as if only a complete moron wouldn’t have realised. I could feel my grip on the interview sliding out of sight.
“What made the police—”
“Ask them.” She turned her back and walked away from me as if making a decision. “How old are you, Mr. Kovacs?”
“Subjectively? Forty-one. The years on Harlan’s World are a little longer than here, but there isn’t much in it.”
“And objectively?” she asked, mocking my tone.
“I’ve had about a century in the tank. You tend to lose track.” That was a lie. I knew to the day how long each of my terms in storage had been. I’d worked it out one night and now the number wouldn’t go away. Every time I went down again, I added on.
“How alone you must be by now.”
I sighed and turned to examine the nearest map rack. Each rolled chart was labelled at the end. The notation was archaeological. Syrtis Minor; 3rd excavation, east quarter. Bradbury; aboriginal ruins. I started to tug one of the rolls free.
“Mrs. Bancroft, how I feel is not at issue here. Can you think of any reason why your husband might have tried to kill himself?”
She whirled on me almost before I had finished speaking and her face was tight with anger.
“My husband did not kill himself,” she said freezingly.
“You seem very sure of that.” I looked up from the map and gave her a smile. “For someone who wasn’t awake, I mean.”
“Put that back,” she cried, starting towards me. “You have no idea how valuable—”
She stopped, brought up short as I slid the map back into the rack. She swallowed and brought the flush in her cheeks under control.
“Are you trying to make me angry, Mr. Kovacs?”
“I’m just trying to get some attention.”
We looked at each other for a pair of seconds. Mrs. Bancroft lowered her gaze.
“I’ve told you, I was asleep when it happened. What else can I tell you?”
“Where had your husband gone that night?”
She bit her lip. “I’m not sure. He went to Osaka that day, for a meeting.”
“Osaka is where?”
She looked at me in surprise
“I’m not from here,” I said patiently.
“Osaka’s in Japan. I thought—”
“Yeah, Harlan’s World was settled by a Japanese keiretsu using East European labour. It was a long time ago, and I wasn’t around.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You probably don’t know much about what your ancestors were doing three centuries ago either.”
I stopped. Mrs. Bancroft was looking at me strangely. My own words hit me a moment later. Download dues. I was going to have to sleep soon, before I said or did something really stupid.
“I am over three centuries old, Mr. Kovacs.” There was a small smile playing around her mouth as she said it. She’d taken back the advantage as smoothly as a bottleback diving. “Appearances are deceptive. This is my eleventh body.”
The way she held herself said that I was supposed to take a look. I flickered my gaze across the Slavic boned cheeks, down to the décolletage and then to the tilt of her hips, the half shrouded lines of her thighs, all the time affecting a detachment that neither I nor my recently roused sleeve had any right to.
“It’s very nice. A little young for my tastes, but as I said, I’m not from here. Can we get back to your husband please. He’d been to Osaka during the day, but he came back. I assume he didn’t go physically.”
“No, of course not. He has a transit clone on ice there. He was due back about six that evening, but—”